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When Clintonville Outfitters decided to expand, Jonathan Barth didn’t care to move far from the store’s N. High Street home.

“Clintonville is a fiercely loyal community as far as supporting their local businesses,” said Barth, founder and majority owner of the outdoor equipment and apparel retailer.

Barth’s business needed space to grow, but he didn’t want to sacrifice location. “When we were looking to expand, we were very focused on making sure we didn’t lose our core customer base, which is Clintonville, campus, that heart of the city and definitely that local feel,” he said.

He decided to renovate a building directly across the street from his original location. The new store, which opened in July, is nearly twice the size of the old and has allowed Barth to expand the products, services and classes Clintonville Outfitters provides.

Even with national names such as REI and Cabela’s moving into the market, Barth is confident that his store’s place in the community will keep business strong.

He’s not just a local business owner; Barth and his family have lived in the same Clintonville home for 11 years.

“We’re excited to spend the next 20 years growing that business out of that store on High Street,” he says.

“We’re excited to have our family grow up in Clintonville, too.”

Q: What prompted you to expand?

A: We (had) been looking to expand for a couple years now. We (had) run out of space and had crammed as much as we could into that space, but a lot of the stuff still is just too big — the kayaks and to properly display the tents, that type of thing. We just couldn’t really do it in the space we were in effectively. … We wanted to be easily accessible to people, too, so High Street is the best. Obviously moving right across the street makes it very easy for people to find us.

Q: How big is the new store?

A: The new building is just shy of 10,000 square feet. … We’re going to be doing kayak rentals and rack installations and all sorts of different things out of there, which is something we couldn’t do effectively in the smaller space.

Q: What helped you outgrow your previous store? Did you diversify your stock or just see an increase in business?

A: In the first three or four years, it was all about finding the products that were selling in this market and really trying to focus in on that type of buying for the business. Once that started to happen, then the customers that were coming in had a few more options, and so then all of a sudden it just grew and grew. And then the business started to expand greatly in the past year.

I think it was finding that product mix that worked for the people who were coming into the shop, and then expanding on those things. Like our rock-climbing business has been up almost 400 percent over the past year.

Q: Are people increasingly interested in outdoor recreational gear?

A: I definitely see people getting an interest in it more and more. The Scioto Audubon Metro Park, that outdoor rock-climbing wall that was put in down there has greatly increased the awareness of rock climbing in Columbus, as well as the opportunity for people to do it, because it’s a free wall. Once you buy a few pieces of equipment, essentially you can go use it for free.

Q: How do you help clients become acquainted with products?

A: Especially in rock climbing it’s very difficult, because the equipment that you’re selling is very specialized and obviously it’s designed to protect you in case of a fall or something like that. So the ability to sell it without the ability to demonstrate it is a little bit difficult. We had a few things in the old store that made it a little bit easier for us to put people in harnesses and attach them to ropes and let them sit around to get what the feel is and to talk about the gear. The nice thing is, now we’ll be able to actually show them.

One of the things that we’re going to be doing because we’ve got the space is classes and clinics, so we’ll do intro to rock-climbing classes and all that kind of stuff, too. Not only will we have the products, but we can also now teach the knowledge.

Q: The store has a reputation as a sustainable business. What do smaller local stores like yours bring to the community?

A: We’re focused on everything in the outdoors, and (being) environmentally friendly is something we try to do. Our dumpster is picked up twice a month, and our recycling dumpster’s picked up every week. And our recycling dumpster is twice as big as our garbage dumpster.